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Niccolo Machiavelli12 quotes
God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1532A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1532The chief foundations of all states, new as well as old or composite, are good laws and good arms; and as there cannot be good laws where the state is not well armed, it follows that where they are well armed they have good laws. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1532Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1532It is much safer to be feared than loved. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1527He [the prince] holds to what is right when he can but knows how to do wrong when he must. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1532All 12 quotes →John Locke10 quotes
Where-ever Law ends, Tyranny begins. — John Locke · 1690The end of law is not to abolish or restrain but to preserve and enlarge freedom. — John Locke · 1690Virtue is harder to be got, than a Knowledge of the World; and, if lost in a young Man, is seldom recover'd. — John Locke · 1693He that will have his Son have a Respect for him and his Orders, must himself have a great Reverence for his Son. — John Locke · 1693The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty and puts on the bonds of civil society is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community. — John Locke · 1690Man being...by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent. — John Locke · 1690All 10 quotes →Baruch Spinoza8 quotes
Nature abhors a vacuum. — Baruch Spinoza · 1677Man is a social animal. — Baruch Spinoza · 1677It therefore comes to pass that everyone is fond of relating his own exploits and displaying the strength both of his body and his mind, and that men are on this account a nuisance one to the other. — Baruch Spinoza · 1677God and all the attributes of God are eternal. — Baruch Spinoza · 1677Pride is therefore pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself. — Baruch Spinoza · 1677He who would distinguish the true from the false must have an adequate idea of what is true and false. — Baruch Spinoza · 1677All 8 quotes →Izaak Walton7 quotes
We may say of angling, as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, "Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did." — Izaak Walton · 1653No man can lose what he never had. — Izaak Walton · 1653I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing. — Izaak Walton · 1653Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics, that it can never be fully learnt. — Izaak Walton · 1653I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning. — Izaak Walton · 1653I love any discourse of rivers, and fish and fishing. — Izaak Walton · 1653All 7 quotes →William Blackstone7 quotes
The king, moreover, is not only incapable of doing wrong, but even of thinking wrong: he can never mean to do an improper thing: in him is no folly or weakness. — William Blackstone · 1765Man was formed for society. — William Blackstone · 1765Whence it is that in our law the goodness of a custom depends upon its having been used time out of mind; or, in the solemnity of our legal phrase, time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. — William Blackstone · 1765All presumptive evidence of felony should be admitted cautiously; for the law holds, that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer. — William Blackstone · 1769That the king can do no wrong, is a necessary and fundamental principle of the English constitution. — William Blackstone · 1765The offense of riding or going armed, with dangerous or unusual weapons, is a crime against the public peace, by terrifying the good people of the land. — William Blackstone · 1769All 7 quotes →David Hume4 quotes
Of all the animals, with which this globe is peopled, there is none towards whom nature seems, at first sight, to have exercis'd more cruelty than towards man, in the numberless wants and necessities, with which she has loaded him, and in the slender means, which she affords to the relieving these necessities. — David Hume · 1739Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. — David Hume · 1739Poets...tho' liars by profession, always endeavour to give an air of truth to their fictions. — David Hume · 1739Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous. — David Hume · 1739Sun Tzu4 quotes
Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be defeated. — Sun Tzu · 475 BCBe extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate. — Sun Tzu · 490 BCTo fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting. — Sun Tzu · 500 BCThe best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities... It is best to win without fighting. — Sun Tzu · 490 BCLudwig Wittgenstein3 quotes
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. — Ludwig Wittgenstein · 1922Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. — Ludwig Wittgenstein · 1922Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. — Ludwig Wittgenstein · 1953Edward Coke2 quotes
Reason is the life of the law, nay the common law itself is nothing else but reason. — Edward Coke · 1628How long soever it hath continued, if it be against reason, it is of no force in law. — Edward Coke · 1628Isaac Newton2 quotes
God in the Beginning form'd Matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable Particles, of such Sizes and Figures, and with such other Properties, and in such Proportion to Space, as most conduced to the End for which he form'd them. — Isaac Newton · 1704Whence is it that Nature does nothing in vain: and whence arises all that Order and Beauty which we see in the World?... does it not appear from Phenomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent, who in infinite Space, as it were in his Sensory, sees the things themselves intimately, and throughly perceives them, and comprehends them wholly. — Isaac Newton · 1704Brooks Stevens1 quote
Our whole economy is based on planned obsolescence. — Brooks Stevens · 1960David Ogilvy1 quote
The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. — David Ogilvy · 1963Florence Nightingale1 quote
I would earnestly ask my sisters to keep clear of both the jargons now current everywhere... Of the jargon, namely about the "rights" of women, which urges women to do all that men do... Merely because men do it, and without regard to whether this is the best that women can do; and of the jargon which urges women to do nothing that men do, merely because they are women... Woman should bring the best she has, whatever that is... Without attending to either of these cries. — Florence Nightingale · 1860Francis Hutcheson1 quote
That action is best, which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers. — Francis Hutcheson · 1725Friedrich Schiller1 quote
The most perfect of all works of art is true political freedom. — Friedrich Schiller · 1794George Berkeley1 quote
What do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? — George Berkeley · 1710George Bernard Shaw1 quote
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell. — George Bernard Shaw · 1910Henry Wotton1 quote
In architecture as in all other operative arts, the end must direct the operation. The end is to build well. Well building hath three conditions. Commodity, firmness, and delight. — Henry Wotton · 1624James VI and I1 quote
A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless. — James VI and I · 1604John Bunyan1 quote
Words easy to be understood do often hit the mark, when high and learned ones do only pierce the air. — John Bunyan · 1665John Dennis1 quote
The great design of art is to restore the decays that happened to human nature by the fall, by restoring order. — John Dennis · 1704John Ruskin1 quote
Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance. — John Ruskin · 1851Joseph Schumpeter1 quote
The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie. — Joseph Schumpeter · 1950Ludwig von Mises1 quote
The market economy as such does not respect political frontiers. Its field is the world. — Ludwig von Mises · 1949Montesquieu1 quote
Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permits. — Montesquieu · 1748Tertullian1 quote
What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? — Tertullian · 220